At RCP, Jay Cost prints the text of a speech he gave to a conference at Princeton University on the national party organizations – and their capacity to manage an election like this one.
I disagree with Cost’s claim that the public will have a clear choice between two distinct political visions in the general election. Nevertheless, his observations on the inability of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee to manage their nomination processes are well worth a read, though I would again disagree with some of the details. For example, his account of the Florida and Michigan disputes does not account for the fact that the decision of the DNC to strip those states of their entire delegations — as opposed to half, which is the usual penalty — compounded the problem.
Cost’s previous look at the Democrats’ half-baked reform of the nominating system in the 1970s is also worth revisiting for an elaboration of why the Democrats have come closer to the spectacle of a brokered convention this year than anyone would have guessed a year ago. I would add that campaign finance reform, including McCain-Feingold, have weakened the RNC and DNC as much as the parties’ internal reforms.
If the DNC tossed out the FL and MI contingents for good and sufficient reasons (and that’s another argument), then shouldn’t they simply reduce the total of delegates by the same amount, and the number required to win by roughly half that?
What’s the freakin’ PROBLEM here, folks? Other than native stupidity and organizational bafflegab, I mean…
As if this is a bad thing… plus the use of the word “manage” and Howard Dean in the same sentence would make me giggle uncontrollably.
BJ Texs,
Granted, the RNC and DNC are a bit of a mess, but there’s a chicken-egg issue there as well. The inability to manage the process — above and beyond Dean-o issues — has left the Dems with not only the FL & MI mess, but also the superdelegate mess, which stems in part from the proportional delegate allocation system, retention of caucuses, etc.
The state parties and their members are jealous for their powers and privileges. That makes it more difficult for the national parties to coordinate anything. The state parties are not going to willingly give up power to the national parties. Add in that American political parties do not operate in a command-and-control manner like a Communist or National Socialist party and the amount of organization they do have appears to be amazing.
The the beast behaves the way it does because the system is created the way it is, i.e.: Federalism is reflected in the parties, and without any real coercion from the center, it is a very weak form of Federalism.